New political terms are on the move. In some places, we’re more likely to be asked to “decolonize” than to “unionize,” to “abolish” an institution rather than to institute a people’s republic. A commitment to socialism does not fit easily or obviously into a discussion that starts here. What’s a socialist to do?

John-Baptiste Oduor’s recent review of my book Elite Capture exemplifies what I think of as a wrongheaded response. Consistently, Oduor confuses the absence of standard left terminology and other cosmetic differences for substantive, unbridgeable political differences with materialist thought. This is less reflective of the actual incompatibility of these ideas and more reflective of a kind of reflexive insularity rampant on the Left. We must overcome this if we are to succeed in putting redistribution or anything else on the political agenda.

Oduor concludes his review with the assertion that “[i]f socialist policies are able to put redistribution, spurred on by productive investment, back on the agenda, then the forms of identity politics that have come to dominate our politics may recede,” which I partially agree with. But, in the meantime, Oduor wonders whether “the painstaking work of engaging with the misconceptions of identitarians is worth the effort.”